Historia de Grecia y Roma

Author: admin

  • Overwhelming crimes

    In Greco-Roman antiquity there are several myths that tell us some overwhelming crimes.

    Men and women are beings with an enormous emotional complexity. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by absolute altruistic heroic actions, others, facts of an incomprehensible cruelty shake us. Certainly, infanticides are especially frightening, in which a crazed father or mother with an incomprehensible cold blood kill their own helpless children in what seems like an infringement of the most sacred laws of nature. It also happens now, in modern times, sometimes, but we can’t imagine what emotional lack may be the cause for these events, for these so overwhelming crimes.

    In Greco-Roman antiquity are several the myths that narrate us some of these crimes. In their intuition or deep analysis of human behavior, the ancient Greeks also approached to these horrendous acts that sometimes happen, although they used literary myths for it.

    This is the case of Philomela, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, who was raped by Tereus, the husband of her sister Procne, mad with passion due to her beauty and insensitive to her pleas. So she could not tell it to her sister, he cut her tongue and locked her. But Philomela embroidered patiently her sad story on a cloak and, this way, she managed her sister Procne to know about Tereus's evilness. The two sisters, oh dreadful madness! planned a hideous revenge. Procne killed her own son, whose resemblance constantly reminded her to her husband, and the two sisters dismembered and cooked him for the criminal father. When he finished the meal, Tereus asked where his son was, and the crazed sisters answered him "that his son was already with him." Overwhelmed the gods themselves, they wanted to end this crime succession becoming Tereus into a hoopoe, Philomela into a swallow and Procne into a nightingale.

    Probably the most famous mythical story is certainly that one referred to Medea, daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis, who was a sorceress. Madly in love, she helped Jason and the Argonauts in their conquest of the famous golden fleece (fleece or sheepskin), betraying her own countrymen. Jason took her and promised to make her his wife in order to thank her for her help. After many adventures, when they reached Corinth, Jason, missing his word, breaks with Medea to marry the princess Glauca, daughter of the King Creon. The sorceress Medea sends Glauca a dress as a wedding gift that sets her alight as a torch when she puts it on her shoulders. The revenge on Jason is much crueler if possible: mother and abandoned, humiliated and mad lover, she kills the two children she had had with him to make the unfaithful lover suffer.

    Medea is the title of one of the most well-known tragedies of Euripides, and since ancient times it has always been a usual topic for the different arts. There are more than a dozen operas on this subject, from Charpentier´s in 1693 to Oscar Strasnoy´s in 2000.

    Medea is also the title of a film by Pasolini in 1969; it is the famous Maria Callas who plays the mythical figure in it. In this film, Pasolini opposed the two components of ancient culture and even of human behavior, the magical and irrational world of Medea to the rational and coldly calculated world of Jason.

    Medea is still shown again and again on stages throughout Europe.

    Next, I am going to reproduce a small part of the final dialogue between Medea and Jason. Perhaps this small piece persuades the reader to read the whole text of the tragedy:
    ...
    JASON. – … Having married me and having had children with me later, jealous because of my bed affairs and my new wife, you killed them. There is no Greek woman who dared to this, and yet, I preferred to marry you instead of them – hated and fatal marriage for me-, lioness, and no-woman, naturally wilder than the Tyrrhenian Scylla …  

    MEDEA. – You were not supposed to, having dishonored my bed, lead a pleasant life, laughing at me; not the princess, or that one who sought you marriage, Creon, shouldn’t have sent me out of this land with impunity. And now, if you please, call me lioness and Scylla who lives in the Tyrrhenian land. In your heart, as I should do, I’ve hit you back.

    JASON. – You also suffer and you share my troubles too.

    MEDEA. – Know it well: the pain releases me, if there’s no joy for you.

    JASON. – Oh my children, such an evil mother you had the misfortune to have!

    MEDEA. – Oh my children, how you have died due to your father’s foolishness!

    JASON. – But it wasn’t my right hand that killed them.

    MEDEA. – But it was your outrage and your recent wedding.

    JASON. – You feel it was right to kill them because you are jealous of my bed affairs?

    MEDEA. – You think that’s a little pain for a woman?

    JASON. – If she is wise, yes, but for you it is the greatest misfortune.

    MEDEA. – (Pointing to the dead bodies). They no longer live. This will bite you.

    JASON. – They live, alas, as geniuses avengers of your head.

    MEDEA. – Gods know who started the trouble.

    JASON. – They certainly know your abominable soul.

                                            (Medea, 1336 …-1373)

  • Greek and Roman Religion drank from different sources

    All religions defend their peculiarity and uniqueness, but in reality all of them feed on the beliefs, myths and rituals existing in their environment.

    There is a theory held by many authors, certainly simplistic, that helps us to understand some of the complexity of the Greek religion and, by extension, of the Roman one. It is the theory of the two sources. During the second millennium BC waves of northern Indo-European peoples, with a pastoral and patriarchal culture, entered the southern Mediterranean peninsulas with agricultural and matriarchal culture. This mainly explains the creation and evolution of Greco-Roman religion.

    But, along with the theory of the two sources, we should certainly join the many influences of the East, of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Middle East, etc.. of an area with agricultural myths from four or five thousand years ago.

    Actually all religion is a syncretism of beliefs, rituals and myths as precisely reveals the history of religions and mythologies of the Mediterranean countries and the Middle East. So for example, the marriage of Zeus and Hera would mean the forced coexistence of an European male god with a Mediterranean mother goddess.

    In any case, compared to some unscientific ideologies that attempt to justify the Greek culture as the exclusive product of an Indo-European component as opposed to the Oriental (which is often identified with the Semitic), we have to maintain an open stance to all kinds of information, and to be critical with any present or ancient source which reproduce the topic of an exclusive Greek rationality versus the surrounding mythical thinking.

  • The first text of political thought is also provided to us by Herodotus

    The ancient Greeks theorized about the various political systems: monarchy, democracy, tyranny

    There are several forms of personal power: monarchy, royalty, tyranny…they are all different, but these three terms have many relationships with each other.

    Throughout History, the ancient Greek people not only had different political systems (monarchy, democracy, tyranny …), but often theorized about this important issue and devoted its most illustrious thinkers like Plato or Aristotle. It could not be otherwise by those who created the Philosophy, rhetoric, science, and reflected and theorized about so many things. Their reflections were by no means simple, but difficult and detailed.

    We owe to Herodotus, the "Father of History", the first text of Greek literature in defining the various forms of government, the first text of political thought. In his Histories, III, 80.1 he puts in the mouth of three Persians (King Darius and his generals Ótanes and Megabizo) the benefits and harms of the monarchy, democracy and oligarchy.

    Ótanes rejects monarchy (Greek μονος (mónos): one, and αρχειν (arjéin): government) because the monarch (king or tyrant are not delimited), who can do whatever he wants without accounting for it, develops pride, excess (ὕϐρις  hybris) and envy of those around him and hurts and kills without trial those he considers his enemies. Ótanes defends the "people's government" or isonomy (from the Greek ἰσονομία  "equality before the law”, as well of ἴσος, isos," equal "and νόμος nomos," usage, custom, law "), because the magistrates are exercised by election and issues undergo deliberation of the people.

    Megabizo rejects democracy or isonomy or government by the people because people are ignorant, insolent and impulsive. He proposes to elect a group of well-prepared persons, named the oligarchy (from the Greek ὀλιγαρχία, ολίγο = little, few and αρχειν (arjéin): government). Oligarchy is then considered as a degeneration of the aristocracy 'government of the best "(Greek ἀριστοκρατία  aristokratía, of ἄριστος aristos, excellent, and κράτος, kratos, power) and therefore it is also a tyrannical system of government.

    Darius rejects democracy because debauchery is inevitable in it; he also rejects the oligarchy because in it inevitably exist rivalries and hatreds, strife and murder against each other because they all want to occupy the head of power; so he is in favor of the monarchy, because, being a single ruler, state secrets are best kept and avoid the above problems. But this monarchy is not tyranny because it governs the people properly. This way, democracy degenerates into oligarchy and, at the same time, this last one turns into a monarchy, which is the best system, because the monarch acts as a judge between the aristocratic groups and favors the people. But even this monarch can easily become a tyrant, who takes away the freedom from his citizens.

    Lately Socrates, Plato, Aristotle deeply developed these ideas, but the first one who presents the discussion, at least the first text we know, is of the "father" Herodotus.

    Today Western world’s citizens are mostly democratic, but there isn’t shortage of voices, that are heard with some frequency, defending oligarchic systems as they consider people ignorant and easily manageable.

    It’s also interesting that still remain good number of Western monarchies, although its political function, very small, is under the rules of democracy.

    And even in many countries of the world there are monarchies, tyrannical monarchies, oligarchies and tyrannical oligarchies and in them there is no freedom for their citizens. Certainly humanity has improved, but how difficult to extend and keep freedom is.

     

    see: history had a father

     

  • Europe versus Asia: an eternal rivalry

    It is known that the Trojan War, which Homer sings in his poem “The Iliad”, was triggered because the Trojan prince Paris, visiting Greece, kidnapped the blonde Helen, wife of Menelaus, and took her to the court of his father, Priam, in Troy

    Greek peoples united under the command of Agamemnon, "shepherd of the people " (ποιμὴν  λαῶν, poimen laôn)  , and besieged the city to destroy it after ten years of struggle. This is the issue that gave rise to a literary cycle as productive in the Greek literary and artistic creation, and in the present days too because of the cultural importance of the classical world.

    Herodotus, in the beginning of his "Stories", cites several precedents of kidnap of women as the source of secular confrontation between Asia and the Greeks, between East and West: the kidnap of "Io" by Phoenicians, the kidnap of “Europe” by the Greeks, the abduction of “Medea” by Greeks ….. So this myth of kidnap has been very productive in the history of mythology and literature, in antiquity and beyond to justify the secular confrontation between East and West, between the Europe of freedom and Asia of tyranny.

    But below the literary story, there is a historical reality that explains the clashes between Greeks and Trojans in the present case as the result of competition for colonization of the Mediterranean between different peoples, as the Phoenicians.

    It is worth recalling that the Phoenicians are culturally Semitic (Phoenician and Hebrew are two languages that can understand each other) as opposite to the Indo-European Greeks. Although these nationalists concepts should be extremely relativized, because the excessive importance given to the Indo-European or Aryan component in the origins of Greece was forged in a scientific context contaminated by German nationalism.

    It isn’t inappropriate to recall how this part of the world was and still is of great geostrategic importance, and thus this is the seat of permanent conflicts until today. To the geostrategic importance now attaches its oil wealth, the source of energy and raw materials indispensable nowadays and a new point of contention.

    Read these articles as well:

    greco persian greco median wars

    history had a father

     

  • The post or post service

    The word “post”, with very few changes, refers to the post service in many countries in the world; its creation is very old.

    "Post"  derives from the Latin word "posita", used in the expression "positae mansiones", which designated the "located stops" (positae= put, placed, situated) that were set all along the Roman roads (viae)  every 25 or 30 kilometers to make the change or takeover of the horses or other animals pulling travel or merchandise carriages.

    In fact this system by changing horses in order to transmit or report messages was created by the Persian king Darius I, who reigned from year 521 to 486 BC. This monarch decided to build a road called the "royal road" which allowed messages to travel along more than 2,000 km linking the shores of the Aegean Sea with the coasts of the Persian Gulf. On this road mails could travel 160 kilometers a day.

    Neither the carriage nor the wheel was invented by the Romans, of course. But the practical Latin people did know how to build a heavy but strong carriage dedicated to the transport of people and goods. On it, it was also placed a canopy to protect passengers from the rain or the sun. These carriages were driven all along the huge and solid network of roads and highways that crossed the Empire and made easy to link every place with the capital or main city, Rome. It is in these "roads" where they built the "positae mansiones". Known is the saying "all roads lead to Rome". Roman roads are one of the strongest and most amazing contributions to the economic, political and social life throughout the Empire. Without them, neither the legions nor the goods could move quickly from one place to another. Many of their outlines still match with the large international traffic arteries. In many cases parts of these roads are even preserved. Many of those "mansiones positae" or posts resulted in many contemporary populations.

    Precisely the Spanish language keeps two meanings for the word "post", which are straightly related to its origin: "group of horses which were set on the roads with a distance of two or three leagues, so the horses, mails, etc.., could be renewed" and "house or place where the posts were" according to the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.

    But it is also interesting that the word to name the mail or post service, I mean, the institution or service in charge of sending letters, packages or other effects between two points, in Spanish it is not only the term or word "post" (post service) but also "correos= mails" (mail service), word of unknown origin which also exists in other Romance languages: in French “courrier”, in Italian “corriere”, in Catalan “correu”. Perhaps it comes from the Provencal word "corrieu", formed from "corir = run" and "lieu = place".

    The public transport organization created by the Romans since the middle of the first century BC was a revolutionary innovation. The “Cursus Publicus”, as it was called in the administrative language, was an organization or public service for anyone’s use by paying a reasonable retribution or tax.

  • Agony

    Why do we call “agony” when the end of life of a person comes, often terrible and painful?

    With the word "agony" we mean the end of life, when a body, which is alive and able to sustain and keep itself until that moment, loses its power and begins to decompose as an organic and structured being.

    "Agony" comes from the Latin “agonia”, and this last one, at the same time, comes from the Greek “ἀγωνία “, meaning fight, combat.

    For anyone who has had the misfortune of observing a non-instantaneous death, explanation is no needed. Those who have not had this terrible experience must know that life hangs itself on to the last moment and that all the vital machinery resists in a terrible struggle to stop working and give it up. Those agonizing moments are a real fight of life against death. Unfortunately, in the end, the death always wins and it has to be accepted.

    Moreover, everything about the death, that in the ancient world and, until recently, also among us, it looked more normally for being more integrated in the life experience of the people, is now treated less directly, as we try to hide it or somehow to keep it, in hospitals or in those places called "morgues.

    Even in the medico-legal language this terrible moment is no more called "death" but "exitus", Latin word for output, exit, departure, outlet, up, way out, journey.

    The final question, however, remains the same, I mean, it’s always the eternal question: "exitus"= output/ exit, but where…?

    But the funny thing is that also the ancient people used this euphemism for "death", which should not be named, because they, like us now, were scared of it:

    For example, in

           : PELEUS: “How … is gone (dead) the only son of my only son?”

    And in Hecuba 414, of the same tragedian, Polyxena, about to be ritually sacrificed, tells his mother Hecuba:

                    "Oh, mother, oh you who gave me light! I'm already going to go down”

    Death scares us, death thrills us. It’s better not to talk about it.
     

  • The most beautiful poem in ancient literature

    For many connoisseurs and lovers of Latin literature, Virgil is the first poet due to his epic poem the “Aeneid”. The second poet would be the lyrical Horace.

    For many connoisseurs and lovers of Latin literature, Virgil is the first poet due to his epic poem the "Aeneid". The second poet would be the lyrical Horace.

    For some of these people the best poem written in Latin is precisely the Oda number 7 from the book IV by Horace. Naturally, about the likes, nothing is written; after all any artistic assessment is just a personal judgment because it is not only affected by the cold rational assessment.

    In any case a particular value should have this poem for the famous philologist, scholar and english poet Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936), extraordinary professor of Latin at Cambridge from 1911 to 1936, who considered this the most beautiful poem of old literature.

    G. Highet tells in his book “The Classical Tradition. Greek and Roman influences on Western literature”, the following anecdote, related to Housman:

    In May, 1914, in the burgeoning spring, he was commenting the poem to his students at Cambridge and surprised them with a personal confession (absolutely unexpected in such a serious teacher): “This, said hastily, almost like a man who betrays a secret, is for me the most beautiful poem in ancient literature”, and he left the classroom excited. Naturally also the most serious and severe teachers have a sensitive heart.

    It is the Epicurean thought what encourages this composition. In this poem the return of spring, already heralded with irresistible force, and the succession of the seasons, warn us that everything passes; but as the years are renewed cyclically, this don’t happen to men; when our sunset comes (we don’t know when) we do not return to life, we are only dust (in the urn) and shadow (in the afterlife), not even the gods can resurrect men; so that we have to seize the moment.

    The snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on,
    The fields their green:
    Earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run
    Their banks between.
    Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads
    The dance essay:
    “No 'scaping death” proclaims the year, that speeds
    This sweet spring day.
    Frosts yield to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring,
    To vanish, when
    Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,—
    Winter again!
    Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
    We, soon as thrust
    Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
    What are we? dust.
    Can Hope assure you one more day to live
    From powers above?
    You rescue from your heir whate'er you give
    The self you love.
    When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed
    The grand last doom,
    Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst
    Torquatus' tomb.
    Not Dian's self can chaste Hippolytus
    To life recall,
    Nor Theseus free his loved Pirithous
    From Lethe's thrall.

    Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington. trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.)

               
    Notes to better understand the poem:

    Graces and their sisters: are the three Graces, goddesses of beauty,
      charm and attractiveness.
    Nymphs: beautiful deities of nature, of the springs, of the rivers,
      trees, and caves.
    Zephyr: west wind, soft and fruitful that blows in Spring.
    Tullus, Ancus: Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius, two of the legendary kings of Rome, they represent the greatness of the past.
    Minos: One of the judges of the lower world, the world of the dead
    Torquatus: the person to who Horace dedicates the poem.
    Diana: is the goddess of the hunt, forests, virgin and therefore goddess of shyness
    Hippolytus: son of Theseus, his stepmother Phaedra fell in love with him and blamed him falsely, he is devotee of Diana and not of Venus
    Theseus: mythical king of Athens, friend of Pirithous, the two descended into hell in search of Persephone, but only Theseus came back with the help of Heracles.
    Lethe: one of the rivers of Hades or Hell ("lethal" derives from Lethe)

                            
                                               ===  ===  === 

    Diffugere  nives, redeunt iam gramina campis
        arboribusque comae;
    mutat terra vices et decrescentia  ripas
        flumina praetereunt;
    Gratia  cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet
        ducere nuda choros.
    Inmortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum
        quae rapit hora diem.
    Frigora mitescunt zephyris, ver proterit aestas
        interitura, simul
    pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox
        bruma recurrit iners.
    Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae;
        nos ubi decidimus,
    quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus,
        pulvis et umbra sumus.
    Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae
        tempora di superi?
    Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico
        quae dederis animo.
    Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
        fecerit arbitria,
    non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
        restituet pietas;
    Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
        liberat Hippolytum,
    nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
      vincula Pirithoo.

  • Kalendae, Idus, Nonae: a very complex way to name the days of the month

    Everything related to the history of the Roman calendar and its transmission until today is very complex, especially for us who are used to a system of nomination of days of the month truly simple, each day is called the number it occupies in the whole month: January 1st, February 2nd or February 15th or March 3rd …

    The Romans named the days of the month  in a much more complicated way. Not in vain the calendar is a religious tool to determine especially religious holidays. This is the reason why the calendar was determined by the priest in many aspects.

    First of all, the month was divided into three periods: Kalends (Kalendae), Nones (Nonae) and Ides (Idus) which correspond respectively with the new moon, half moon and full moon. This means that they did not know the division in "weeks", which actually was not imposed until the Emperor Constantine.

    The kalends, (word that some people relate with Kalare = to call) indicated the beginning of the month, when the crescent moon appeared, and therefore correspond to day 1.

    The nones indicated the first quarter of the moon and corresponded to the fifth day of the months of January, February, April, June, August, September, November and December; and to the seventh day of the months of March, May, July and October.

    The ides indicated the full moon and corresponded to the 13th day in the months when the nones fell on day five and to the day 15th in which the nones fell on seven.

    These monthly milestones were referred in adjectival form; i.e., January 1st was called “Kalendae Ianuariae”; January Kalends, or better say considering the termination for the ablative case of circumstance of time "Kalendis Ianuariis"; February 1st was called "Kalendae Februariae”; February Kalends; January 5th was called "Nonae Ianuariae"; March 7th “Nonae Martiae".

    March 15th (the day Julius Caesar was assassinated) was call "Idus Martiae". "Beware of the Ides of March" is precisely what Caesar was advised by a fortune teller, who Caesar did not listened, and since then the phrase has become a prototype of warning, a prototype of a precautionary statement before a dangerous situation is announced.

    "Ad kalendas graecas" is a Latin sentence that means "for greek kalends", that is "for never", because de greek months do not have "kalends".

    This certainly seems complicated, but it is much more complex how were known to the rest of the days of the month. Well, a day was always called by reference at the prior key day (Kalends, Nones, Ides). That is, they counted the days until a key day would take place.

    For example, January 2nd was the "sixth day before the nones of January", that is to say “ante diem VI Nonas Ianuarias”; January 16th (given that January has 31 days), will be the day "seventeenth before the Kalends of February", Latin for " ante diem XVII (decimum septimum) kalendas februarias "; the 17th will be the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February (ante diem XVI kalendas februarias) and so on.

    Only the day before each milestone (kalendae, nonae, ides) was called "pridie” = the day before) and the next “postridie” = the day after). "Eve", derived from "vesper", Latin for "afternoon", naturally the afternoon before the next day.

  • Troy was placed where the poem said

    Troy is a topic that has produced a lot of literature, but for thousands of years its location was forgotten. However the poet told us very clearly where it was buried; we only had to trust on his words.

    The Iliad, Homer's poem, sings the war and destruction of Ilion, Troy. This city really existed on the coast of Asia Minor, now Turkey.

    In fact there were several Troyas, the poem’s one is nothing less than the VI. The ancients did not bother too much to remove the rubble of a city devastated by war or by any natural or unnatural disaster. It was more convenient and less expensive to build on the ruins.

    The site of Troy was discovered by the German Schliemann in 1870, because he had the ingenuity or the brilliant idea to blindly believe in the data brought by the poem itself, which Schliemann regarded as a historical narrative.

    Perhaps this was that way because Schliemann was nothing but a German businessman who forged an enormous fortune, keen on archaeology, who could only go to college at age 44, getting  a doctorate degree three years later.

    This peculiar man, who also made other notable discoveries in Greece at Mycenae, Tiryns, Orchomenus, not only learned Greek, which rhythm and musicality made him fall in love without understanding a word, but also could speak 15 languages at age 33.

  • Demeter and Persephone are personifications of nature

    Greek mythology is very rich and diverse, the result of the own Greek genius and also of the confluence of ancient Asian, Mediterranean, African beliefs (Mesopotamia, Egypt …)

    Many myths are today difficult for us to be understood and interpreted. Others are more obvious. Among this diversity, some of them that specially highlight or outstand are clearly referred to the phenomena of Nature, for which an explanation is sought, explanation that is redundant "mythical", fabulous, yet unscientific.

    Among them one of the most evocative and of easier interpretation in outline is that of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter (Δημήτηρ, mother goddess”,   ἡ Μητὴρ hê Mêtềr = the mother)  (mother of the ground, of  vegetation, agriculture and cereals, protector of marriage and much more) is an ancient goddess. Persephone is her daughter, also known as Kore (Greek word meaning "the maiden, the girl").

    Hades (Pluto to the Romans), god of the Underworld, kidnapped Persephone (Proserpina to the Romans), who was playing with some nymphs, and raped and carried her off  down into hell.

    Her mother looked for her desperately and, meanwhile, she prevented the Earth from giving fruits and new life. Zeus had to interfere, who forced Hades to return her back to her mother, but not before cheating her to eat a few pomegranate seeds. The fact of eating the pomegranate seeds forced her to return to Hell or Hades during a time of year.

    When the girl, Persephone, was with her mother, Demeter, the Earth flourished and gave fruit; but when Persephone lives in Hell with Hades, the land withers, dries and becomes infertile.

    This myth was celebrated throughout Greece with the holidays called "Thesmophoria" in which only women were involved, being forbidden to men.

    The myth, of course, refers to the succession of the seasons: the ground, the whole nature, dies and becomes sterile during a season and, during another, it greens and offers its fruits.

    These myths about death and resurrection, about the cycle of life that is consistently restarted, had a far-reaching importance in the ancient mind and still have among us moderns.

    This cycle of death and resurrection is evident in the plant world in which, beings, dead in winter, rise in spring. Myths relating to the world of vegetation are innumerable; that of Persephone is one of the most beautiful and clear.

    Moreover, the success of many religions was to relate, to identify the cycle of nature with the life cycle of the persons, who also died as evident, but are called to resuscitate.